At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case.
Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it…
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
This was easily the biggest driver. For GOT, I had legal access but I was expected to wait over a month, by which time because the internet - the spoilers would have been completely unavoidable.
Reminds me of Shrek 2. Which premiered 6 months after the US in my country.
I wanted so badly to watch it in cinema, but internet talked about it, friends talked about it, and I had people coming over with burned copies wanting to share it with me…
Yeah, I did not see it in cinema. For some reason it didn’t do well here.
It just seems retarded not to do global releases at this point. Like we’re all connected as hell. How do you expect to make one country wait 6 extra months? Just dumb. Lost revenue for no reason.